Sunday, 10 March 2013

Introduction to Socialism (part 2)

Transcript, selected links and slides with quotations...

·In part one we looked at socialist ideas in the
19th century. Today we will be looking at societies that were
referred to as socialist in the 20th century.

·So let’s start.

·Firstly, we had Soviet Russia, later becoming
part of the Soviet Union.

·Here, the Bolshevik party, led by Lenin took
power in a coup as the Russian government struggled to deal with widespread
agitation by Russia’s lower classes. The Bolsheviks then instituted a one-party
dictatorship and a largely state-planned economy.

·It is worth noting here that there has always
been a lot of confusion, both internally and externally, over whether the Soviet
Union should actually be described as Socialist.

·In fact, whilst Lenin re-named Russia the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and later named it as part of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR), he also regularly explained that the
country was in fact not ‘socialist’.[1]

·Lenin, who was influenced by Karl Marx’s theories
to an extent, thought Russia was not economically advanced enough for a genuine
socialist revolution.[2]
He believed Russia had to develop economically, or Germany had to lead a world
revolution, before real socialism – meaning direct worker control and direct
democracy - could be enacted in Russia.[3]
In the meantime it was the role of the Bolsheviks to develop Russia
economically and maintain political control.

·This included suppressing Factory Committees and
Soviets which were trying to build socialism from below.[4]

·He regularly lashed out at his socialist
opponents, including writing a pamphlet called ‘Left-wing communism – an
infantile disorder’.

·For these reasons, many prominent socialists did
not consider the Soviet Union to be socialist at all and instead referred to it
as state-capitalist, with some considering the collapse of Bolshevik rule a
victory for socialism.

·However, by Lenin’s time, the word socialism had
also become associated with state control of industries, so the Soviet Union
was in some way ‘socialist’ if we apply this new meaning of the word.

·The libertarian socialist, Bakunin, who as
discussed in part 1, had criticised Marx’s ideas and predicted oppressive
Marx-influenced dictatorships, would probably have derided the Soviet Union as
‘’state-socialist’ – which for Bakunin was a contradiction in terms.

· On a
related point, the Bolsheviks referred to themselves as the Communist Party.

·Meanwhile Western governments including those in
the US and UK also described the Soviet Union as a Communist society even
though the Soviet Union matched no traditional definition of communism. This
was possibly to give the word communism a bad name by associating it with Bolshevik
rule.

·Whatever the reasons, the result of the word Communism
being so widely used with regards to the Soviet Union, was that Communism also
took on a second popular definition: that is a one-party state, with a planned
economy or heavy government involvement in the economy.

·This has been re-enforced by other authoritarian
states, such as China and North Korea, also referring to themselves and being
referred to as ‘communist’.

·Moving on, another example of a country referred
to as socialist is Sweden.

·One of the main political parties in that
country, which has been in power for the majority of the last century, is the
Social Democratic Workers Party (also known as the SAP). This party refers to its policies as either
social democratic or democratic socialism – terms which were formerly used as
synonyms for traditional libertarian socialism, anarchism or communism.
However, the SAP uses the terms differently.

·The SAP leadership thought of socialism as
government action designed to achieve social well-being, rather than as a
social system based upon abolishing private ownership of the means of
production.

·Following this, while in power during much of
the 1900s, the SAP kept multi-party, parliamentary democracy and private capitalism
to some extent, with Sweden being home to some of the world’s best known
corporations including Ikea and H&M.

·However, the SAP also enacted welfare policies,
state provision of services such as healthcare, and state companies providing
transport and energy.

·Note that during the 20th century,
mixed economies with similarities to Sweden became prevalent throughout the
world.

·It is also worth mentioning that since it became
common for mixed economies to be referred to as socialist, many people have
begun referring to ANY government intervention in the economy as ‘socialist’.

·This includes welfare spending but also, when a
corporation gets a subsidy, or a bank gets bailed out by the government, some
refer to this as socialism – or in these particular examples, one term used is ‘socialism
for the rich’.

·What is noteworthy here is that if we describe
any government spending in the economy as socialism, then many thinkers who have
considered themselves anti-socialist, such as the famous Austrian economist and
philosopher Freidrich Hayek, have actually been to some extent socialists as
they have favoured state welfare for the poor and other government programs to
prevent unrestricted markets causing excessive social and environmental
damage.

·Additionally, by this definition, several
government leaders who considered themselves anti-socialist were also socialists.
For example, Margaret Thatcher - who strongly criticised socialism - actually
increased total public spending after taking power from the labour party, which
had referred to itself as socialist.

· Moving
on, a final type of socialism I want to discuss is Revolutionary Spain during
the 1930s.

·A fascist coup occurred in Spain 1936, which
sparked an anarchist-influenced revolution throughout much of the country,
during which many urban and rural areas were taken over by anarchist
collectives. Direct worker control of workplaces and broader direct democracy
became widespread.

·The anarchists also formed militias to fight the
fascist and state communist armies, which were both supported by foreign
governments.

·It is worth mentioning that one of the most
popular 20th century British writers, George Orwell, fought with the
anarchist militias and wrote a very interesting book on his experiences called
‘Homage to Catalonia’.

·However, unfortunately for Orwell and his
comrades, eventually, the anarchists were defeated by the foreign supported
armies.

·Note that due to the direct worker control of
workplaces and broader direct democracy, anarchist Spain came very close to the
traditional libertarian socialist ideal favoured by figures such as Bakunin.

·OK, so that brings us to the end of our discussion
of the different uses of the word socialism.

·As we have seen, the term is used extremely broadly.

·In fact almost every modern society in recent
history has matched someone’s definition of ‘socialism’.

·However, we can identify two main types of
socialism.

·Firstly, traditional mainstream socialists
favour direct worker control of workplaces as well as broader direct democracy
in communities.

·More recently, socialism has taken on a second
meaning which is: state involvement in the economy – often for redistributive
purposes, but not necessarily.